Rambling Film

Mr. Lonely Blake (Michael Pitt) is a rock musician in Seattle who has reached a point in his career where he's wandering about, questioning the meaning of his existence. He walks through the countryside silently while his friends and band members (Lukas Haas, Asia Argento) search for him. Director Gus Van Sant made this film when he realized making a documentary on Kurt Cobain would be too personal for his friend Courtney Love. Therefore, nearly everything about Blake is reminiscent of Cobain. The looks, the way he mumbles. It makes Blake's sadness even harder to take knowing Kurt likely felt it.  This movie definitely isn't for everyone, but if you're a fan of Van Sant as I am, I would recommend it. I used to think Paranoid Park (which I loved) was the least accessible of his films, but this one is even more so. It's largely silent, when Blake does speak or sing, sometimes it's hard to understand him. Yet even with all of that you can't help ...

This week's theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is that time and place for everything....college. Not gonna lie, this is a tricky genre. Most college movies I've seen kind of suck. (Road Trip) or aren't very memorable (Dead Man on Campus) My favorite one, American Pie 2, I already used in a previous pick this year. But I did manage to find 3 that I really enjoy. 1) Old School This movie is about three men who open up a frat house in a bid to re-live their more interesting college lives is hysterical. It was also the post SNL movie for Will Ferrell that I think really put him on the path to being one of the best comedic actors out there. 2) How High Red Man and Method Man smoke their dead friend's ashes and it helps them ace their college exams and gets them into Harvard. Ridiculous you say? Try ridiculously awesome. 3) Scream 2 I love the Scream trilogy. Poor Sydney can't even escape psychos when she goes to college. 

I'm still trying to get back into the swing of things here. While I was away, I was fortunate enough to get nominated for this award more than once! It's always nice to be thought of by other bloggers who I love reading so much. So thank you, Vern , Anna , Katy , Sati , and  Mettel Ray . You guys are the best! Now on to answer your questions.. Vern 1. Name an older movie you would like to see remade. The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane is an older horror film I always figured would be remade rather decently.  2. Name a movie that should never be remade, ever. The Exorcist 3. Who was your first celebrity crush? Josh Server from All That .  4.  Mary/Fuck/Kill (Gilbert Gottfried, Emo Phillips ,Donald Duck) Kill all three. (lol) 5.  What was the first movie you watched with your parents  that had a sex scene. How did you react?  I can't recall what the first was, however I do remember my sister making me cover my eyes during A Clockwo...

Elvis is in the building. I know, I've been lacking on my indie gems lately. In the years I've ran my blog, I've had them every single Friday, but these last few weeks have had none. Life has been busy, but I hope to get back into the swing of things with my indies now. Elvis Presley (Michael Shannon) decides one day he wants to become an undercover FBI agent to help fight the nation's drug problem. Along with his friend, Jerry (Alex Pettyfer) he flies to Washington D.C and attempts to speak with President Richard Nixon. (Kevin Spacey) Nixon doesn't want to see him, so two of his staff members (Colin Hanks and Evan Peters) goes behind his back to try to make the meeting work. I thought the trailer was hilarious the first time I saw it, but the film had a much more serious tone then I expected. It still has plenty of laughs, I just thought it to be campier.  The plot does feel a little aimless, but it fits with Elvis' wandering about D.C waiting fo...

This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is World War II. A few weeks ago we had WWI, and unlike that one where I struggled to find picks, I'm struggling to narrow them down here. There's so many WWII movies. They almost seem repetitive at this point, but that many films also means there's quite a few great ones. I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and Pearl Harbor this week. Here's three of my favorites. 1) Au Revoir Les Enfants I just watched this back in April for the Bling Spot Series and it's been my favorite of the year so far. The story is about a French Catholic boarding school where one boy discovers the new student is a Jew being hidden from the Nazi's. It's an amazing movie.  2) Life is Beautiful I'll always appreciate this film, about an Italian family sent to concentration camps for the fact that it actually managed to show something lighthearted in such a dark t...

I'm back! With my vacation and work being busy, I haven't gotten to do as much on the blog this month as I wanted. I fell behind on my Indie Gems for the first time in years, and I didn't fell asleep during my Blind Spot viewing. (which is what I get for trying to watch it at 2:00am, I suppose) Either way, thanks to airplane TVs here's a few things I watched in the past week. Hopefully it's back to business as usual around here.  Kubo and the Two Strings I saw this one in theaters with my husband and son. The animation was gorgeous, easily the best of the year. The story, however just didn't match other animated greats like Zootopia or Finding Dory. Plus, my son was irrationally bothered by the fact that Kubo's instrument had three strings on it for most of the film. "Why isn't it called Kubo and the THREE strings?" Symbolism, son. Grade: B Hello, My Name is Doris When I first saw the trailer through this, I figured it would be a...

This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is another foreign language edition! This week we get quite a bit of variety to choose from, any of the Scandinavian countries. This was actually quite hard to narrow down, there's so many great ones. I chose one film from three different countries these week, with a mental note to see more Finnish and Icelandic films.  Please note this post is queued, I'm still on vacation and will check everyone else's out when I get back! 1) Troubled Water From Norway - this story follows a man who was convicted of killing a child when he was a teenager, and after he's released from prison he has trouble starting a life without people finding out what he did. 2) The Hunt From Denmark - The Hunt is about a teacher whose entire life is ruined due to a lie by a young student. I actually wanted to burn this fictional town to the ground by the end of it.  3) Let The Right One In From Sweden - One of my favorit...